


Little lines that write your face

by cthink



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Bullying, Drabble, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pre-Slash, School, but blink and you'll miss it, calum is a lil hurt squish, i wrote this a v long time ago and will probably delete, michael loves him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 14:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7390504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthink/pseuds/cthink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael thought he was beautiful, with his papery leather books filled with scrawled ink lettering, carving words of magnificence into delicate pages. </p><p>Unfortunately, not everyone else did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little lines that write your face

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from I Know by Tom Odell. 
> 
> This is purely a very short and entirely unedited drabble!! I found it and thought I may as well post it, but it is likely I will delete this. I always thought about expanding this into a multi-chapter work but I'm not really sure where I'd go with it. I hope you enjoy regardless x

It was as if he was woven from the earth itself; supple dark skin and thick black boyish curls and wide, timid coffee eyes all too ethereal to be humanly. Michael thought he was breathtaking. All soft and golden, like the sunbeams themselves - untouchable yet so impossibly stunning, and painfully taken for granted. Ignored. Neglected.

Michael thought he was beautiful, with his papery leather books filled with scrawled ink lettering, carving words of magnificence into delicate pages, and his little quirks - quick ducks of the head when someone said his name a little too loudly, or the blush of his cheeks when he was flustered or the way he bit his full bottom lip and furrowed his dark thick eyebrows in concentration, sat at the back of the class, glowing in the light flowing down from the skylight when he thought no one else was watching. Unfortunately, not everyone else did.

Michael hated them all with a burning fury for rejecting someone just because they were of the slightest difference - without regard to any talent or passion or skill or personality. Michael wanted them to feel what it was like to be shoved roughly into a locker day in, day out, and for them to have what they cared about snatched harshly and ripped into tiny, irreversible pieces of hatred and hurt, and Michael would do it all to them so they could feel the same pain that the boy was surely feeling - were there more than one of him.

But no. Michael was alone, and Michael was no match. Michael was a coward. Michael wasn't nearly as pure or as beautiful or as innocent or as unreal as he was, and he'd do anything to take away the hurt. Take his place. Because Michael deserved it more than he did. And although Michael may not have ever actually talked to him - scared he could break him, so fragile and delicate like a flower on the brink of Autumn, ready to shed its feathery soft petals - Michael believed anyone deserved the pain more than the boy did.

And so Michael did what he could - he picked up the ripped pages and tried his hardest not to let his eyes skim quickly over the private and carefully crafted lines that were too special for his own eyes as he handed them back to the boy, and he'd just shake his head shyly and scurry away like he didn't think he deserved to be in Michael's presence, and Michael would hand him a tissue gently when he'd accidentally find him hunched over a sink with crimson blood trickling somewhat unstoppably from his nose, and Michael would pick him up off the floor from where he'd been beaten until his brown caramel skin had blossomed with purple flowers of bruises, and every single time anger would threaten to overwhelm him like a fire, and it took everything in him not to use that fire but he knew it showed in his eyes - but most of all, Michael's heart broke. It shattered in his chest without fail for every tear or drop of blood shed, for every piece of innocence destroyed, for every ounce of hurt.

Michael remembers crying the first time he felt the soft, smooth skin of his cheek. Underneath the sycamores in the courtyard, obscured from the view of others by the vast playing fields and the cover of bark and dense leaves, the sunlight dappled and shadowed by the browning leaves, and Michael had found him alone and sobbing as he cradled what must've been the last of his leathery notebooks he always seemed so immersed in, all torn with the cover bent back at awful angles and shreds scattered around him. From a distance, the scraps looked like petals. Soft, dead petals. Michael had hesitated, considered turning on his heel and pretending he saw nothing because yes - he helped him occasionally when the pain was physical and when it seemed like the proper thing to do - but he was treading in dangerous waters because Michael thought he was the most amazing thing he'd ever set eyes upon, and yet as the person he was, one with a respectable reputation, he wasn't supposed to believe those things. And yet, Michael's weakness and, perhaps even fate, led him to crouch down slowly next to him - the boy started and then hid his face anyway - and hand him a page from the book that'd drifted across the hot stone slabs in the gentle summer breeze, and eventually, after gazing into the dark, pain-filled eyes for so long and admiring how they glowed a hot and brilliant auburn in the rays of sun glancing down, carefully bring a pale hand up to rid his cheeks of the large, wet tears that'd rolled down and left iridescent salty tracks across the innocent rosiness.

And Michael knew it was wrong, but his eyes never left the boys, and his hand lingered a little longer than necessary over the beautiful tan smoothness, and Michael wanted nothing more to explore everything just a bit more, but his hand eventually fell away and the boy's teeth sunk into his bottom lip and Michael relaxed back against the bench the boy had been hidden behind with silent tears running down his own face now, and the two of them looked out into the trees, the only sound hushed sniffles and gentle wind whistling through the crevices of every branch and nook of the tall trees surrounding them.

Michael remembers when he first heard the voice - thick like honey, and yet so childishly and improperly jovial after all he'd suffered - and yet, of course, there was always that slight tint of pain that Michael feared would never leave, like a chip in fine china.  
"Calum," he'd said so quietly Michael had barely heard it over the far-off sound of chalk scratching it's way along the whiteboard as they sat at the back of the class together, with Michael finally having mustered some of the courage he'd been so desperate for to move next to the younger boy's desk, and Michael had frowned because at first he couldn't quite believe he'd actually spoken, and then he realised it was a _name_ , and that it was a nice one, at that - and Michael had smiled so big his cheeks hurt and the boy - Calum - had blushed and turned away but Michael didn't mind, because now he knew his name. And so Michael tapped him gently on the shoulder, revelling even in that brief touch how firm and soft he felt all at once, and Calum had turned shyly back around, blinking through thick dark eyelashes, cheeks turning even pinker like cherry blossom, and Michael had simply said just that -  
"Michael."

He'd never seen Calum smile before. But Calum smiled then. And it was miraculous and pure, because the crinkles around his eyes were the same crinkles that formed when his face was twisted into a sob, only now there was less pain and much more sweet happiness, and gentle dimples creased his cheeks around his mouth, from where his lips had melted into a friendly grin, and Michael allowed his fingers to brush Calum's own ever so slightly, and neither boy commented on it.

And Michael felt like maybe - just _maybe_ \- everything would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if you enjoyed! x


End file.
